Do We Have Too Many Rich People In Congress?

In this great big middle class country of ours-- where even someone like Mitt Romney, who inherited tens of millions and managed to turn that into many more at his vulture capital firm, laying off workers and shipping jobs overseas claims to be "middle class," right along with families struggling to get by on $35,000 a year-- people are uncomfortable talking about social class and economic caste. Part of our collective unconscious is that we're all equal and we don't even have that here. Jamie Johnson's movies, Born Rich and The One Percent may have shocked many, but they infuriated the wealthy for blowing their cover.

This week a friend of mine told me that it looks like SuperCommittee member-- and multimillionaire-- John Kerry will get to cast the deciding vote on whether or not Medicare is bargained away for some insignificant (and very temporary) tax increases on the wealthy. I voted for Kerry when he ran for president... but with great reluctance. I never liked him and I never trusted him. People who inherit or marry into great wealth just give me the heebie jeebies. Better than Bush? Well, sure... but is that always going to be our fate, finding the less reprehensible candidate between two wealthy shitheads?

I want to know what other people think about this idea. Would it be beneficial to most Americans if we had more political leaders who are not fabulously wealthy running our government? Can the rich really even know what ordinary American families are going through? Should we start taking that into account when we cast our ballots? Funny that the DCCC does the exact opposite; like the NRCC, they disqualify working class candidates when they can find wealthy self-funders or suck-ups with lots of rich friends.

Tuesday, Roll Call reported that as normal American families saw their financial situations take a nose dive, Members of Congress got rich and richer.

Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members' financial disclosure forms.

Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.

...These wealth totals vastly underestimate the actual net worth of Members of Congress because they are based on an accounting system that does not include homes and other non-income-generating property, which is likely to tally hundreds of millions of uncounted dollars. In addition, Roll Call's tally is based on the minimum values of assets reported by Members on their annual financial disclosure forms; the true values of those assets may be much higher.

...And as protesters around the country decry the supposed consolidation of wealth in America, the trend can be seen starkly in Congress, a comparison suggested by American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Mark Perry. The 50 richest Members of Congress accounted for 78 percent of the net worth in the institution in 2008 ($1.29 billion of the $1.65 billion total); by 2010 the share of the 50 richest had risen to 80 percent ($1.63 billion of the $2.04 billion total). The pie of Congressional wealth got bigger, and the richest Members are getting a bigger slice.

But there is still plenty to go around. Overall, 219 Members of Congress reported having assets worth more than $1 million last year; subtracting the minimum value of their liabilities brings the total number of millionaires in Congress down to 196-- again not counting any value on their homes or other non-income-producing property. If one were to assume that every Member of Congress has $200,000 worth of equity in real estate, the total number of millionaires would rise to 220 Members, just more than 40 percent of the Congress.

So how about electing some blue collar Democrats committed to a New Deal agenda that puts working families first, before Big Business, Robber Barons and corporate managers?

None of the Blue America candidates has inherited great wealth and all of them are committed to a progressive agenda. I'm not familiar with every single candidate's personal financial background but I do know that many of them-- John Waltz (MI) and Ken Aden (AR) are two examples-- are products of working class families. The feeling I get from these two is kind of the opposite of what I get from John Kerry. I know I'll never have to worry if they would put Medicare or Social Security on the chopping block for some extraneous reason. For them that would be like putting their parents or their children on the chopping block.

Am I being unfair or off-base on this? I'd like to know what you think. Or just contribute to John and Ken (that means something different in L.A. and anywhere else in the known universe) today to show me what you think if you'd rather.

In a speech [video below] last month for Public Citizen, Bill Moyers was sniffing around some of the same thoughts... which makes me think I can't be all wrong.

We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to produce the policies favored by the majority of Americans. We speak, we write, we advocate-- and those in power turn deaf ears and blind eyes to our deepest aspirations. We petition, plead, and even pray-- yet the earth that is our commons, which should be passed on in good condition to coming generations, continues to be despoiled. We invoke the strain in our national DNA that attests to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the produce of political equality – yet private wealth multiplies as public goods are beggared. And the property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly feared as an unseemly “veneration for wealth” are now openly in force; the common denominator of public office, even for our judges, is a common deference to cash.

So if belief in the “the dogma of democracy” seems only skin deep, there are reasons for it. During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains a century after the Constitution was ratified, the populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed: “Wall Street owns the country… Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us… Money rules.”

That was 1890. Those agrarian populists boiled over with anger that corporations, banks, and government were ganging up to deprive every day people of their livelihood.

She should see us now.

John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup, and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it.

That’s now the norm, and they get away with it. GOP once again means Guardians of Privilege. 

Barack Obama criticizes bankers as “fat cats”, then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person. 

That’s now the norm, and they get away with it. The President has raised more money from banks, hedge funds, and private equity managers than any Republican candidate, including Mitt Romney. Inch by inch he has conceded ground to them while espousing populist rhetoric that his very actions betray.

Let’s name this for what it is: hypocrisy made worse, the further perversion of democracy.

Democratic deviancy defined further downward. Our politicians are little more than money launderers in the trafficking of power and policy-- fewer than six degrees of separation from the spirit and tactics of Tony Soprano.

Why New York’s Zuccotti Park is filled with people is no mystery. Reporters keep scratching their heads and asking: “Why are you here?” But it’s clear they are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied the country. And that’s why in public places across the country workaday Americans are standing up in solidarity. Did you see the sign a woman was carrying at a fraternal march in Iowa the other day? It read: “I can’t afford to buy a politician so I bought this sign.”

Nor can she afford to be a politician. And that's more of a problem. Moyers goes on to repeat something that would make the Founding Fathers turn over in their graves: “The United States is on its way to becoming a European-style class-based society.” Well on it's way.